JLA No. 6 "The Debut of The Time Lord" FORWARD

Here is our second issue...and as I promised in my AFTERWARD to Number Five, it isn't going to be in the same "teams break up" format. When I sat down to write these stories, I always started with The Bad Guy. It had to be somebody strong enough to keep the JLA occupied....So after I decided on The Time Lord (a villain I never really cared for in the comics, to tell you the truth) I pretty quickly came up with the general idea of what I wanted to do: the JLA would tackle a time-travelling criminal who has tools and equipment that makes their 20th century stuff look like bows and arrows. But how would they come together? The Time Lord wouldn't be an egomaniac like,say, The Joker or Lex Luthor who *wants* to confront their nemeses. No, The Lord of Time would want to *avoid* the JLA. So what if one of the members accidentally came across him and tried to handle him on her own, but soon realized she was out of her..ahem...league, and needed help? 

If you read interviews with writers you will often hear them say things like "the characters took on a life of their own" or "the story wrote itself." It's kind of a cliche, but it's true! I remember setting this story up and as I was heading towards the page limit (36, because they were printed double-over) I realized where this story had to go...! See if you can figure out where it's going before we actually get there. :-)

This issue's translation was also managed by the wonderful Mariko Tadokoro. I can't say enough about how wonderful she was to work with. If I had something even a little wrong she would make a face as if to say, "How do I tell this guy that this doesn't make any sense but not hurt his feelings?" I would jump in and say, "I can change it! What do you suggest?" Sometimes I would use the wrong Japanese characters, and then she would laugh and say, "You don't mean to say (whatever the mistake was), do you?" My clearest memory of working on this particular issue was when she read the Japanese name of the villain, "Lord of Time." She said, "Oooh, he sounds dangerous." I knew I had picked the right phrase.